Comparison of commercial ELISAs for antibodies against FMDV non-structural proteins

Introduction The 2001 foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreaks in Europe have made clear that using emergency vaccination can shorten the duration of the outbreak. Until recently in the OIE code there was a big gap between the time needed to regain the status free of FMD without vaccination when using only stamping out or stamping out supported by emergency vaccination. For exporting countries this was a negative incentive for using emergency vaccination in case of an outbreak, unless culling all vaccinated animals was considered an option. The availability of tests that can differentiate between vaccinated and infected animals (DIVA principle) made it possible to reconsider the OIE code. In the current code therefore the use of DIVA tests has been implemented and the gap in time needed to regain the status of free of FMD without vaccination between using only stamping out, or stamping out supported by emergency vaccination has been greatly reduced. Currently there are several commercial DIVA tests for FMD available, some of them sold as screening test, others as confirmatory test. In the current study we compare 5 of these tests on a selected set of positive and negative sera from cattle.